


Potty Training For Puppies 101

by Ren



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 12:38:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ren/pseuds/Ren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's dog pee everywhere in his house. <i>Everywhere.</i> Derek hates his life. (Or, the one in which Derek adopts puppy!Isaac at the shelter and has to call Stiles for help.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Potty Training For Puppies 101

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Slumber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slumber/gifts).



> For Evy/slumber, who was kind enough to bid on me for the Teen Wolf charity auction thingy, that was very kind and generous or her but also very misguided since I am terrible with deadlines. She wanted puppies. I give her puppies. ~~OMG Evycakes I'm sorry this is so late and I don't really know anything about puppies so I hope that this is a little bit what you wanted and that you'll like it, welp.~~ Beta by Sas/theaeblackthorn.

Stiles stares at the man in front of him. The man stares back. He's, well, Stiles isn't the kind of person who waxes lyrical about someone's amber eyes and ebony locks, except in this case he totally would. Stiles didn't even know that he had a type before the guy walked in, he thought his type was everyone as long as they were alive, and human; live, breathing humans, that was Stiles's type. Except now his type is tall, dark and handsome. And tall, dark and handsome is staring at him.

"Erm," Stiles says, intelligently. "Can I help you?" It comes out as a pitiful squeak. He's seized by sudden panic, flails one arm around and hits a pile of pamphlets, sending them all flying to the floor. Yes, Stilinski, great job with that first impression. The pamphlets fall over the man's boots. "Sorry," Stiles says.

Tall, dark and handsome just stares at him, looking all sullen and brooding and hot. Then he bends down and picks up the pamphlets for Stiles. Which is nice of him. Or maybe he didn't want Stiles to come near him and accidentally headbutt him. That's the more likely possibility, since he looks like the grumpiest grump who ever grumped.

Not that it matters. Stiles never had a chance with tall, dark and handsome, and not only because he's tall, dark and handsome and Stiles is Stiles. The guy has a girlfriend already. She's also tall and dark, maybe more pretty than handsome... Okay, okay, who is he kidding? She's hot. Tall, dark and handsome has a hot girlfriend already, so Stiles shouldn't even bother trying to impress him.

The girl flashes Stiles a smile. Of course she's smiling. Stiles would smile too if he had a boyfriend like that. "Derek here would like to adopt a puppy."

"A puppy," Stiles repeats. "Yes. Of course. A puppy! Well, you're in the right place, we're a shelter, we have a lot of puppies for you to adopt. Or kittens. And an elderly bunny. But mostly puppies." He would like to stop, but he doesn't know how. His brain-mouth filter has never been very good. "So you came to the right place. To adopt a puppy," he concludes, in case anyone still had any doubts that he's a complete moron.

The girl is still smiling, obviously too polite to ask why he's acting like a madman.

Derek doesn't say anything, but Stiles thinks he hears a very small sigh. The man's probably regretting his decision to wake up today, not an uncommon reaction in those who are exposed to Stiles for any amount of time, especially a Stiles whose brain to mouth filter has suddenly stopped working.

Stiles would like to run and hide in the back until those two have left, but he can't. He's the only volunteer here today, which means that all of those adorable puppies and kittens (and one elderly bunny) are counting on him to get a new home. Stiles is their only hope; the poor animals are screwed.

Tall, dark and handsome scowls. "Laura, please, _I don't want a puppy_ ," he says, half-turning towards the girl. "I said I'd maybe get a dog, but..."

"Don't listen to my brother," Laura says, and oh, _oh_ , they're siblings! "Derek is terrible at social interactions. I'm moving away soon and I'm afraid if I leave him to himself he'll turn into a hermit." Does that mean that this guy is single?! "That's why he needs a cute widdle puppy to keep him company, don't you, Der?" she says, ruffling Derek's hair. He swats her hand away and his frown, if possible, deepens.

Stiles is still feeling overwhelmed by the sudden revelation that tall, dark and handsome is available. And lonely. He flails and drops his pamphlets again. "Yeah, sure!" he squeals, his voice more high-pitched than it has been for the past ten years. "Lots of cute widdle puppies for Der to adopt."

Derek glowers at him.

\---

It's Laura's fault. Of course it's Laura's fault. Everything that's wrong with Derek's life can ultimately be traced back to Laura, and that's because his big sister is a nosy bully who won't take 'no' for an answer.

He'd thought he'd get some peace and quiet once Laura moved to New York in the spring. Turn the second bedroom into a gym, have more space for his music collection, and finally get a full night's sleep without being woken up at 2am because Laura bumped into something while going to the bathroom.

Fate, Derek decides, is a jerk.

There's dog pee everywhere in his house. _Everywhere_. Derek hates his life. He looks reproachfully at the puppy -- _his_ puppy, oh joy -- and the puppy looks back, unrepentant. For such a small thing, he made a fucking huge mess overnight.

It's still some time before dawn and it's a Sunday, but going back to bed is out of the question. Derek mops up all of the mess, and he swears that Isaac pees again in the kitchen just after he's cleaned it. "Please," he says, scratching the puppy behind his ears. "Please stop doing that. How do I get you to stop doing that?"

Google is worse than useless. Derek makes himself a double espresso and sits at the kitchen counter, looking at websites about dogs and puppies in particular, but it doesn't help at all. Everyone says different things and most of those sites talk about health issues, or about how to get dog hair our of your clothes, or maybe Derek is using the wrong search terms. He doesn't know how to phrase it better than 'how do I stop this fucking puppy from peeing on everything I own'.

Two coffees and twenty websites later, Derek needs help. Now. Because Isaac just peed under his chair, and maybe it's Derek's fault, he's doing something he shouldn't, like he gave him the wrong water to drink or he's not giving him enough food. He told Laura he didn't know how to care for a puppy. He didn't even want a puppy in the first place. But, as usual, she'd gone ahead and forced the ball of fur on him. "I don't want my little brother to be all alone," she kept saying, and at this point Derek is just grateful that she didn't buy him a mail order bride from Ukraine.

Derek could call Laura and ask for puppy help, but it's not a good idea for several reasons. First, Laura never had any dogs either. Second, it's 11am in New York and so she's up already, no point in calling if he's not going to be a nuisance. Third, Derek doesn't like to admit that he needs any help. Even though he really, really, really needs some help here.

He picks up a handful of pamphlets that he got from the shelter, in case one of them has a title like _HOW TO STOP YOUR PUPPY FROM PEEING ON EVERYTHING YOU LOVE!!!_ but no such luck. However he does notice the phone number scribbled on the corner.

It's a symptom of how desperate Derek is that he grabs his phone and dials the number without even thinking twice about it. It takes more than a minute for the guy to pick up.

"Hnnnrghello," he says, sounding slightly muffled by something. Derek probably woke him up, it is ridiculously early on a Sunday morning after all, but he can't bring himself to feel guilty about it. He thinks back to the tall, gangly, twentysomething guy he saw the other day at the shelter. Stiles.

When Derek and Laura had gone to the shelter to adopt the puppy, Stiles had knocked over a pile of pamphlets and generally made a fool of himself while talking too much. Laura had found him adorable and told Derek that she thought Stiles fancied him. Derek had found hm annoying. But he hadn't been able to stop Stiles from giving him his phone number.

"In case you, er," Stiles had said. "You know. Ever need something. Need help. With the puppy!" His voice had gone progressively higher and he had turned purple, and then he turned around and pretended to check the form that Derek had filled out, even though he'd already checked it earlier.

Derek hadn't meant to call him, at all, but Stiles had offered. So. "Hello," Derek says, in a fake cheerful tone. He doesn't ask if he woke Stiles, since it's obvious he has. "It's Derek. Uh, we met the other day at the shelter. You said to call if I had any questions about the puppy...?"

Stiles had said "if you need any help", but Derek isn't going to admit that he needs help. It's just a tiny, minuscule problem. A tiny problem that pees a lot.

"Uuuuhngh," Stiles says at the other end of the phone. "Yeah? Did I?" There's a long pause, and then, "Derek!" A high-pitched yelp, and a thud, like Stiles just fell out of bed. Maybe he did. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.

"Stiles?" Derek asks, wondering if there are vets open on a Sunday and if there are the vet equivalent of emergency rooms and if an incontinent puppy qualifies as an emergency.

"Yeah, sure, _Derek_!" Stiles says, sounding slightly out of breath. "Isaac's new owner. Uh, sure, is there any problem?"

Derek bends down to scratch Isaac again. "How do I stop him from peeing everywhere?" he asks. "Is there some _Potty Training For Puppies 101_ in that pile of pamphlets you gave me yesterday?"

He could swear he hears a snort coming from the other end of the phone. "Is that all?" Stiles asks, yawning. "I thought it was an emergency or something."

"It is an emergency," Derek says, glaring at the wall in front of him and wishing he could be glaring at Stiles instead. "I woke up and there was dog pee everywhere! There were puddles!" It's not natural that something so small should produce that much liquid.

"Well," Stiles says, stretching the word into another yawn. "Potty training for puppies is basically just saying 'no' any time he pees. And if he looks like he's about to pee you just take him outside right away."

He makes it sound ridiculously simple and obvious, as if it's Derek's fault for not having any inborn knowledge about puppies. Derek listens carefully anyway, until Stiles's voice trails off mid-sentence and he hears snoring at the other end of the phone. Then he ends the call and hurries to take Isaac outside.

\---

If Derek has to be completely honest with himself, which is not something that he does often, but if he did... it's not so bad, having Isaac around.

True, the puppy is a handful, he wakes him up at the crack of dawn and wants to go for endless walks and loves to jump into puddles, getting his coat all muddy and trailing paw prints all over Derek's floor, and then he'll complain when Derek tries to bathe him. And sometimes he gets scared when he's around other dogs, or even around other people, so Derek has to pet him a lot and bribe him with treats and call him a good boy to calm him down.

And sometimes Isaac scares the crap out of Derek, like that time Derek thinks the puppy ate his watch; that has to be bad, swallowing a watch, it's metal and plastic and it's going to do terrible things to his insides, Isaac is going die and it's all because Derek is a terrible owner. So Derek calls Stiles in a panic, flailing about in a very Stiles-y way for a couple of minutes until he manages to say, "I think Isaac ate my watch!"

Silence on the other end. "Dude," Stiles asks after a while, "that's not possible. Isaac is too small to swallow it, he'd chew on it at most."

"What if he was chewing on the leather and ate it by mistake?" Derek says. He tries to make Isaac open his mouth, but Isaac runs away and hides under the sofa. "I shouldn't have let it lying around. Damn it."

"Derek, dude, I told you it's just not possible," Stiles says, and there's something in Stiles being the voice of reason. Derek would see the irony in this if he wasn't too busy freaking out over the fact that his dog is going to die, he didn't even last four months, and that's all Derek's fault.

"The watch was on the counter, and now it's not there any more," Derek says, kneeling next to the sofa to try and lure Isaac out. "Where else could it have gone? Come on, Isaac, please come out..."

On the other end of the phone, Stiles lets out a long breath. "Okaaay. So, if that's really what happened, uh, that might be dangerous for him. You should get Isaac to a vet, asap."

As if he heard the word 'vet', Isaac retreats as far back against the wall as he can. Derek thrusts one arm under the sofa. "Please, Isaac, be a good boy... Oh."

"Oh? 'Oh' what? Is that a good 'oh'?" Stiles asks. "Is it a 'oh, Isaac spat out my watch so there is no medical emergency after all'?"

Derek's face becomes very hot all of a sudden. "Er. It's a 'oh, it looks like my watch fell under the sofa'."

Stiles laughs. "I told you!" he hoots, almost perforating Derek's eardrum. "No way he could've eaten it." But he sounds so relieved that Derek doesn't have the heart to be upset.

Derek simply grunts. Isaac, feeling with his sharp canine senses that the threat of the vet has lifted, comes out from under the sofa and nips at the edge of Derek's jeans, pulling him towards the door. "Gotta take Isaac out now," Derek tells Stiles. "Thanks for the help."

"Yeah, no problem," Stiles says. A pause. "Hey, do you want to meet up? I can bring Scott, so he and Isaac can play together." Scott is Stiles's beagle, who's six years old but doesn't mind playing with the much younger puppy. He also doesn't mind when Isaac barks at him, and lets him sniff his butt. Apparently that's the appropriate thing to do if you're a dog, and Scott is very good at showing Isaac what to do; Isaac's social skills have improved a lot. "Usual place in thirty minutes?" Stiles asks.

"Yeah, sure," Derek says, bending down to pet Isaac and secure the leash to his collar. "It's a date."


End file.
